New Release Review: 'Sicario'

A truck (that looks rather like a tank) charges along baking tarmac towards its destination: the front wall of a nondescript house in a nondescript American neighbourhood. In less than a minute, and using only a handful of shots, director Denis Villeneuve builds an unrelenting tension that doesn't let up till the credits roll. Once the truck arrives, bursting through the wall of the house, the tension barely abates, but at least the situation is clarified: the truck contains an FBI strike team, and the house and its occupants are part of Mexico's drug cartel. Understanding who, what, why, where and when will turn out to be a rare thing in Sicario, where ambiguity and confusion reign supreme.

We experience most everything through the eyes of FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), who leads her strike team in the latest raid in a long line of raids, this time into a veritable house of horrors. Drugs are seized and bodies (presumably of rival cartel members) are found, and there seem to be an unlimited supply of both, as the feuding cartels continue to take pieces out of each other whilst also sending as much of their product across the US/Mexican border. Plan A in the 'war' against drugs clearly isn't working; enter Plan B in the shape of consultant Matt Graver (Josh Brolin). His task: "To dramatically overreact." He offers Kate the chance to join him and his team - which includes another outside consultant, the taciturn Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro) - as they set out to bring order to chaos. And so begins Kate's journey down the rabbit hole.

It's apparent within the opening moments that Sicario is a Hamlet-drama, i.e. anyone and everyone could be dead by the end of the tale, and Villeneuve uses all the tools at his disposal to accentuate that sense of perpetual danger: Roger Deakins stunning cinematography, with its canny use of space, only ever revealing enough of our surroundings to make us wonder what's happening just out of sight; Jóhann Jóhannsson's score, which might be the most relentless thing about the film, as it builds quietly, but insistently; and Blunt's confused and horrified Kate, our audience surrogate, who can deal with a house full of decomposing bodies, but finds the ambiguity of Graver's actions and agenda much more unsettling.

There's much more I could write about Sicario - there's Del Toro's enigmatic turn as Alejandro, the cog around reach everything else is moving; there's the matter of do-the-ends-justify-the-means of what Graver and his team are doing; there's Villeneuve's expert direction, which isn't so surprising after Incendies and Prisoners - but, for the most part, that all needs to be seen to be appreciated. So go watch it already.

Rating: 10/10